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How are you all? My Splinterlands-loving brothers and friends. I hope you are all well. First of all, I want to make one thing clear—I am not a professional reviewer or developer, but rather a regular and dedicated player of this wonderful game like you. I myself play this game on mobile most of the day. But lately, I have been noticing some slowdowns or lags while playing the game on the mobile version. As a normal user, I felt that I needed to see what the technical aspects were like behind the scenes. Out of that curiosity, I did a speed test using Google's Pagespeed Insights tool.
The sole purpose behind writing this article is to discuss the possibilities of how the performance of the website of our beloved game can be further improved. I am not writing this to belittle anyone or find any mistakes; Rather, I am sharing this analysis with you with the best wishes that those of us who play regularly have a smoother and more beautiful experience.
When I ran the test from my phone, I saw that the mobile performance score came in at '27'. As a regular player, I know how valuable every second is when selecting cards during battles or browsing the marketplace. The report showed that it takes about 24.2 seconds to load the main content or 'Largest Contentful Paint' (LCP). This indicates that on a normal quality mobile network, users may experience some delay in loading the site.
Also, the 'Interaction to Next Paint' (INP) is 590 milliseconds, which indicates that when we click on a button, it takes a little time to respond. We have to make quick decisions while playing games, so we, mobile users, would benefit greatly if this response time could be reduced further.
Google's report has made several specific suggestions. For example, our site's JavaScript files take about 6.0 seconds to load and execute. If this time can be reduced, the site will become much lighter.
A big issue is image size. The graphics in the game must be beautiful, but the report shows that we could have saved about 5.5 MB of data by optimising image delivery. Also, many images are not given the correct size or dimensions, which causes the content to move a little or the layout to shift when the page loads.
Splinterlands' accessibility score is around 80, which is quite promising. However, there is room for improvement. If you fix the minor issues, especially the lack of names for some buttons or the lack of 'alt' text on images, then users with special needs will be able to enjoy the game more easily.
The site scored 96 in terms of best practices, which is really remarkable and commendable. This shows how careful the developer team is in terms of security.
However, some errors were found in the robots.txt file in the SEO section. This may not directly affect our gaming, but it can cause some problems for new players to find the site through search engines.
I checked not only the mobile version but also the desktop version. There, the performance score came in at '31'. Although we usually use a good internet connection on the desktop, the huge network payload of 16 MB is making the site a bit heavy.
The 'Total Blocking Time' for desktop users is showing 1,760 milliseconds. As a result, scrolling or page loading may be a bit slow for those using a slightly less powerful PC or laptop. Cleaning up 1.6 MB of unnecessary JavaScript will also give desktop users excellent speed.
Splinterlands is not just a game for you and me; it is a love affair. We want this platform to be bigger. As a regular player, my main goal in this analysis is to draw the attention of the authorities. With image compression, cache memory optimisation, and removing unnecessary code, our beloved site will run at rocket speed.
I hope that my suggestions will be viewed positively. If the developer team pays attention to these issues, we mobile players will have a lot more peace of mind and new players will also be more attracted to this game. Long live Splinterlands! I would be happy to hear your opinions.
